Jarmila Poláková, producer of Citizen Havel, will be inducted into the Producer's Hall of Fame and receive the award from Helena Třeštíková and Alena Müllerová at the Karlovy Vary IFF.

Jarmila Poláková, producer of Citizen Havel, will be inducted into the Producer's Hall of Fame and receive the award from Helena Třeštíková and Alena Müllerová at the Karlovy Vary IFF.

Jarmila Poláková, a leading documentary film producer and key personality of the production company Film & Sociology, will be the first woman to be inducted into the Producers Hall of Fame at the 58th Karlovy Vary IFF. She joins Jiří Ježek and Jaromír Kallista, who were previously honored with the same recognition. This is the third time the award is presented by the Audiovisual Producers´Association (APA). Poláková's work combines science, sociology, history and philosophy with documentary filmmaking, and she is known as the producer of Citizen Havel. Jarmila Poláková will receive the award in the form of a new statuette from documentary director Helena Třeštíková and creative producer Alena Müllerová at the Grandhotel Ambassador Národní dům on Sunday, June 30.

Medallion Jarmila Poláková: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc9QkHQl7YE

"I am pleased that this year the APA Board unanimously decided to nominate producer Jarmila Poláková. Documentary filmmaking has always been a strong current in Czech audiovisual, often overshadowing fiction in terms of quality and success. Jarmila's work has significantly contributed to its development and social importance, and she is still an active producer and a role model and inspiration for the next generation of producers," says Vratislav Šlajer, Chairman of the Board of APA.

Film & Sociology was the first independent post-revolution film production company focusing on documentaries. Jarmila Poláková, as the main personality of the company, worked with leading intellectuals and artists and contributed to the growth of two generations of documentary filmmakers. After graduating from the Czech Technical University in Prague, Poláková worked as an engineer in Ledeč nad Sázavou, where she was involved in the activities of a film and music club that spawned the legendary Lipnice nad Sázavou Folk Festival, for which Poláková worked as a dramaturge. In the second half of the 1980s, the festival exceeded the boundaries of genres as well as the rules of the regime. One of the personalities who made a public appearance at the festival was the then dissident Václav Havel. Jarmila Poláková's next steps were strongly influenced by her cooperation with Alena Müllerová, Helena Třeštíková, and sociologists Josef Alan and Jiří Kabel, the co-founders of Film & Sociology. The company has brought more than 160 documentaries and television programs to television screens and cinemas – capturing the groundbreaking period of the 1990s and beyond – many of which have become part of the golden fund of contemporary audiovisual art. Poláková's films include Window to the Soul of the Dying, Tell Me Something About Yourself – René, Pavlína, Láďa, Martin, Milan, Prophets and Poets, Four Velvet Men Then and Now – Michael Kocáb, Martin Mejstřík, Jan Ruml, Kryštof Rímský, God's Stone Quarry, Olga, and How I Became a Partisan. Poláková's best-known documentary to date is Citizen Havel, with whose director, Pavel Koutecký, she worked until his tragic death in 2006.

"Citizen Havel was an extraordinary achievement that is unlikely to be repeated, namely that
a high-ranking politician would be so willing to let himself be filmed. Jarmila Poláková deserves much credit for the creation of the film, which she had to complete without her director, Pavel Koutecký, who died during filming. She then completed the documentary together with cinematographer Míra Janek, who took over the direction from Koutecký," says director Helena Třeštíková, who worked with Jarmila Poláková in the early 1990s, for example on the documentary about the life of nuns, Stvořil jsem tebe (I Created You).

For the third edition of the Producers Hall of Fame, sculptor and designer Jakub Berdych Karpelis' studio Qubus created a sculpture in the form of a brass exclamation mark encased in glass: "For the award, I chose the exclamation mark as the main visual motif, which emphasizes the nature of the producer's work, its inseparability from the project, thus abstracting the general and professional view of the producer's role as an irreplaceable person in the process of creating an audiovisual work". The day after receiving the statuette, on Monday, July 1, at 12:15 p.m., Jarmila Poláková will give a moderated interview in the KVIFF.TV Park about her experiences and beginnings as a producer in Czech film industry, preceded by a 20-minute film medallion about her. Since 2022, the APA Producers Hall of Fame honors independent producers who have significantly shaped the profession in the Czech audiovisual environment since 1989.

APA - Audiovisual Producers´ Association
Martina Reková, martina.rekova@4press.cz, +420 731 573 993

Klára Bobková, klara.bobkova@4press.cz, +420 731 514 462
Národní 28, Praha 1
www.asociaceproducentu.cz